One interesting session at last week's Techonomy conference focused on "autonomous mobility," a broader term that encompasses both self-driving cars and other kinds of technology. Like many attendees, I was most interested in their projections as to when we will get self-driving cars, and compared to what I often hear at tech conferences, this panel offered sober, mostly realistic projections.

Mark Bartolomeo, Vice-President of IoT for Verizon, recounted that telematics started in 1997, and with GM's OnStar, the company now has 6 million vehicles on the network. Bartolomeo noted that there would be different kinds of autonomy, and suggested we will have fully autonomous vehicles by 2030, and that by 2035, 30 percent of the fleet would be fully autonomous, though still accounting for only 10-20 percent of miles driven.

Melissa Cefkin, an anthropologist with Nissan, noted that this will most likely be a gradual shift, and that while we'll see pockets of application by 2026, it will still be uncommon. She expects that by 2025, there will be 600,000 autonomous vehicles. But overall, she said there is declining interest and trust in such vehicles, and added that the industry needs to focus on daily experience, as consumer expectations vary greatly from place to place.

Douglas Davis, General Manager of Intel's Augmented Driving Group, Intel Corporation, said that some form of autonomy would be in a majority of vehicles in the 2025 to 2030 range, but said that we need to move quickly. For example, it took 50 years for the industry to adopt air bags, which was far too slow, he said. "This will save lives," Davis said. He noted that Intel recently acquired Mobileye, which knows more about the environment around a car, and is now integrating that knowledge into its systems.

Chris Urmson, founder and CEO of Aurora Innovation, which is building software and a system for driving such a car, said you can start to see progress toward autonomous vehicles today, in things such as Tesla's Driver Assistance, and driverless shuttles moving at a low speed. The application areas will continue to grow, he said, and he thinks that "you'll be able to go meaningful places in two years." But he cautioned that the fleet takes 15 years to turn over. Urmson, who is well-known in the industry for his stint at Google X, agreed with Davis on the need to push for faster adoption, and added that unlike airbags, autonomous features will be in use every day.

Bartolomeo said that it’s "not just about the vehicle," but all of the other assets involved, including media, insurance, and whether people will accept longer commutes if they don't have to worry about driving. He said it looks like the number of miles driven could actually increase, because of more use by people who don't have a car today. This increase could be offset by better management of cars, however, ideally resulting in less congestion. Cefkin said she expects an increase in congestion in the early years, but as optimization and adaptation play out, the situation will improve.

Davis said we will see a range of autonomous things, and he too expects more miles will be driven in the short term. But, he said, after a transition period, car usage could become much more efficient, and noted that the average car is used only 4 percent of the time.

Also in the session, Dyan Gibbens, CEO and founder of Trumbull Unmanned, which sells drones for use in harsh environments to collect data for the energy sector, talked about the importance of such vehicles for environmental and industrial sustainability. She said that we need to advance autonomy "with digital ethics in mind." Regulation is important, and she talked about FAA and DOT rules on unmanned aircraft, though she noted that "with every opportunity, there is also a threat."

Moderator Steve Levy of Backchannel asked about obstacles yet to be overcome and breakthroughs we’re still waiting on. Urmson said there remains hard work, "but not fundamental science." He said the hardest problem is anticipating the next 5 to 10 seconds, in this case meaning things like predicting where other cars and pedestrians will be. Urmson noted that they can't just get it right most of the time (as in most machine learning applications), they must also be able to handle rare events.

Cefkin said that the "interaction-rich world of cities is where the biggest challenges exist." She talked about how we do things without thinking and said AIs don't do that yet. As an example, she said vehicles interact on the road in very subtle ways, and that people are good at accommodating micro-interactions. Urmson is confident that the autonomous systems will get better at this kind of reasoning, and said people are very bad at it, but do it anyway.

Later, Davis explained that Intel's role is that of a "tier 2" provider selling equipment and services—such as Mobileye's vision processing and sensor fusion system, or automotive-grade versions of Intel CPUs, LTE, and 5G modems—to full systems integrators. As such, it is selling building blocks, and not doing things like setting driving policies. But the products are used for a variety of things, from infotainment, to driver assistance, to full autonomy. Davis expects the market for autonomous vehicles, data, and associated services will reach $70 billion by 2030.

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